Opinion: The credit reporting system shouldn’t punish Americans for getting sick
Opinion: The credit reporting system shouldn’t punish Americans for getting sick | CNN
If we had a proper healthcare system then getting sick wouldn't impact your financial situation so severely
If you had a proper healthcare system you wouldn't get crazy bills at all...
But people exploiting it start screaming "socianism!" and everyone starts booing and suddenly forgets it's plain how a nationwide insurance works.
Yes...it should. The only answer to this problem is universal healthcare...period. if this were implemented poor people will be in crippling debt the rest of their lives and once again the middle class will eat even higher insurance premiums to make up for it.
Big healthcare will get aggressive around settling it's debts and it will squeeze blood from a stone if it has to.
Universal Healthcare or nothing.
I don't think they should be even able to bill if the insurance does not accept the charge. They should have to work it through insurance first and if insurance denies it they can get a signature of the patient to say they will pay but the form they sign must show the response from the insurance company to show they went through the process and determined it cannot be done with insurance. It can't be some sort of standard form every patient is required to sign before even being seen.
This. I had to get an MRI done to diagnose severe stenosis in my neck. I had to wait 3 excruciating months for the appointment, I had lost almost all ability to care for myself, couldn't walk, couldn't use my left hand due to the muscle spasms. I go to the hospital the day of my appointment, the desk clerk says
"sign this for that says you'll agree to pay if insurance denies the procedure"
"Ok, I have insurance and (in hindsight) I'm going to die if I don't get emergency surgery soon, insurance should cover that right (signs)?"
"Sure"
2 months later...
Hospital "Insurance denied your claim because we didn't bother to submit a pre-auth, you owe us $6500."
"Ok I can't pay that, can I pay a little while I try to work with insurance"
"Sure, go ahead and agree to this 60 month payment plan, it's only $100/mo"
"Ok, I'll do that for now while I try to negotiate with everyone"
Bank that now owns my debt and cannot be negotiated with: "No negotiations, we own $6500 in debt, we want $6500"
Even if they submit the pre-auth I have had so many denials that show up a month after the procedure was done and for things were it could have waited. It had to be done and maybe its way worse to wait but this is america so it can wait (not yours but things from my family). I can budget for maximum out of pocket each year but not for maximum out of pocket and someone unknown amounts that has no upper ceiling. and to get off topic I love the we won't cover this pretty cheap and easy thing that has been around for awhile and has a proven track record to work or improve outcomes but we will this big expensive surgery that you know oftentimes work but if it doesn't, woa baby your quality of life is sunk. but hey your choice. its like a game of chicken. their cost versus your willingness to risk aweful outcomes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Too often, patients receive bills filled with hard-to-interpret codes and outright errors — where a mistake can add thousands of dollars in costs but require weeks of persistence to unravel.
Over the past decade, research from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and independent experts has demonstrated that medical bills should be treated differently than other kinds of debt.
If the CFPB finalizes the rule as proposed, we estimate this action will remove $49 billion of medical debts that unfairly lower the credit scores of 15 million Americans.
We expect that people affected by the change will see their credit scores rise by an average of 20 points and that lenders will be able to approve approximately 22,000 additional safe mortgages every year.
States like Colorado and New York have reached similar conclusions and passed laws banning all medical debt from appearing on credit reports.
Companies that produce credit scoring models, like VantageScore and FICO, which are financially incentivized to assess the predictive value of medical debt, have also reduced their reliance on this junk data.
The original article contains 676 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
America. You ok bro?
No we are not ok.
Never have been.
I'd be happier if there and actual identity control system in our credit system. Identity theft is stupidly difficult to clean up.
Oh no, I can't afford to live to continue to pay tribute to my landed lord! The bosses from my 3 part time jobs will be so disappointed I left them short handed. What about the profits I could have generated shareholders?
Alas, I have let down all these dependants in my life by being to poor to afford health care.
Or even better, single payer where the patient doesn't have to do anything about the cost. Why should cancer patients and people with traumatic brain injuries need to worry about costs?
Why should single mothers? Why should any person who needs treatment?
This is really the only logical answer. When else is someone allowed to force you to agree to unknown terms at the consequence of your health? That matches every definition of extortion I can find...
Hospitals jacking up prices is kind of a function of the insurance industry. Insurance says "We're only going to pay you ten percent of what you've actually billed," so health care providers take the amount that they're willing to receive for the services and add a zero to the end. This becomes the "retail price," and you don't get access to the insurance price. Only the insurance companies do, and you have to pay them a monthly "protection fee," whether you require healthcare that month or not.
Do insurances only pay a set % of charged? Because in that case hospitals would just charge whatever arbitrary amount they wanted.
I think insurances set hard limits on paying individual types of tasks and procedures. Hospitals and doctors bill whatever they want, insurance pays X that's allowed, tells the insured what they owe, and the rest is written off by the doctor because no one is obligated to pay it.
Just because it's not on a report doesn't mean providers have no recourse when it comes to seeking compensation. If they so choose they can take anyone to court and obtain a legal judgement. The frequent calls and letters from collectors are no picnic either.
The biggest issue I have with paying bills on time is the stupid billing systems. Like 30% of the time I either can't find the payment option in their portal, login doesn't work, don't see any record of services (i.e. just give us money), or the total amount owed is different from the paper bill. Life is distracting, and if I can't assess what I'm paying for and get to the "Submit Payment" button in 10 mins then don't expect me to remember 8 hours later when I again have free time.
Had to have my ankle put back together in November after breaking it super bad. Almost all of the bills have gone to collections because there are too many separate bills for me to keep up with. I'd also just get them randomly and new ones keep popping up every so often. Sometimes I cry just thinking about it.
Which means for scheduling care they'll have to either explain all the charges or they won't get business. But for emergency care they are still fucked. They can't deny emergency care regardless of payment ability.
That's a whole Lotta words to say universal Healthcare